Discover Top Posts Tagged with #viktor kossakovsky

Gunda (dir. Viktor Kossakovsky).

This wordless black-and-white documentary about farm life captures a mesmerizing sense of nature. It’s a beautifully rendered mood-piece of small moments following animals just living and going about their day photographed artistically.

Screening at the Vancouver International Film Centre on August 1, 3 & 7.

#gunda #farm #reviews #pig #documentary #viktor kossakovsky #pigs #black and white #movie #movies #movie review #film #film review #cinema #neon #indie film #indie movie #norwegian #joaquin phoenix #norwegian film

Gunda(2020) dir. Viktor Kossakovsky

#Gunda #Viktor Kossakovsky #film

Gunda

directed by Viktor Kossakovsky, 2020

#Gunda #Viktor Kossakovsky #Viktor Kosakovskiy #movie mosaics

Best Films of 2019: Honorable Mentions

Is Tumblr even the best platform for this anymore, in 2020? Not sure, but it’s habit now.

I’ve got my top 50 tallied up and you can find that here. In the meantime, here’s some films that didn’t make the final cut but that I figured deserved a shoutout regardless. Check it out:

Aquarela dir. Viktor Kossakovsky

Few films are so simple in concept but so overwhelming in execution. Aquarela sets out to be nothing more or less than a documentary about water, at its most dangerous and awe-inspiring: crashing waves, frozen lakes, and gigantic cliffs of ice are presented without commentary or artifice, letting the images speak for themselves with the occasional help of a harsh metal soundtrack. A kind of pure cinema experiment in gorgeously captured natural imagery (in 96 fps to boot!) that is reverent to the power of water almost to the point of fear. It might be said that the potential outstrips the product here - it’s slow, not totally audience friendly, and some sequences are more mundane than others - but when that combination of sound, image, and scale hits it really hits.

Buoyancy dir. Rodd Rathjen

A Cambodian boy, eager to find work, gets scammed into slave labor on a Thai fishing boat, under the leadership of a sadistic captain. Apparently meant as a sort of awareness-raising project on abusive labor practices in Thailand, this Australian production ends up more memorable as a taut and empathetic thriller. More than anything a triumph of casting - amateur actors Sarm Heng and Thanawut Kasro are captivating as the boy and his captain, and lend a great deal of credibility to the single-boat potboiler premise with their surprising chemistry. It’s a modestly-scaled affair and in some ways obviously a first feature, but the commitment to mood and setting make this worth seeking out (even if the humanitarian angle gets a bit lost in the shuffle).

Ford v Ferrari dir. James Mangold

Dad Movie material of the highest caliber. Commits the sin of dragging itself out over the more mundane parts of the story (the will-he-or-won’t-he between Miles and Shelby is almost entirely not worth the time), but wins you back with engagingly muscular racing sequences that dominate much of its second half. Bale and Damon are their reliable selves as the lead duo, and there’s some charming support work from Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, and Ray McKinnon that lets the setup go down smoothly. A well-executed but bloated film, essentially, but at least one that delivers where it counts. It’s good enough that the idea of a just slightly better version is especially tantalizing. Perhaps with a different director... Michael Mann, say?

Kumbalangi Nights dir. Madhu C. Narayanan

Hands down the best-looking Indian film I saw this year, and probably one of the best soundtracks from anywhere. Ultimately a very sweet family drama about four brothers navigating a non-traditional family unit, full of sweet moments and charming performances. The most memorable element of the film, however, is Fahadh Faasil’s turn as the bushy-mustached antagonist, the overbearing brother-in-law who manages to be both cartoonish and genuinely menacing. Faasil ends up providing the film with a weird energy throughout, and facilitates one of the most breakneck genre switch-ups I’ve ever seen in the last half hour(!) of the film, which I still can’t decide is genius or simply derailing. A very curious movie that I’m still not sure what to do with months later.

The Lighthouse dir. Robert Eggers

More stylistically ambitious than The Witch, but trades in that film’s relative narrative and thematic clarity for something a little harder to grasp. Mostly a good trade, I think - as this moved along I was really swept up in the shadows, the sounds, and Willem Dafoe’s facial expressions, and the film kept ramping up the weirdness in a satisfying way. Appropriately, the film does feel a bit like a bender - you end up losing track of much of the big-picture plot as it goes on, but you’re occasionally pulled into these moments of sharp sensory clarity (the Hark! speech being the most memorable example) that seem to block out everything else. You get a bit blindsided with an ending that doesn’t seem to follow from the rest of the film, but in the meantime it’s an incredible showcase of atmosphere.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night dir. Bi Gan

I give this film a lot of credit for two things: the hour-long, seemingly impossible unbroken take that everyone loves to talk about, and the fact that it raked in money as a holiday release in China despite the fact that obviously most people would not actually enjoy this (the proto Uncut Gems). As with Kaili Blues, the story here is vague and dreamy - something about a funeral, a lost love, some criminal interests - and not especially concerned with legibility. Plus, the first stage of the film drags on so long that the long take that makes up the second half almost feels like a different movie altogether. Still, Long Day ends up being such a showstopper that it makes me feel bad that I’m not on Bi’s wavelength. Or maybe he’s tricking me too, just like all those Chinese cinema goers?

The Moneychanger dir. Federico Veiroj

A rather nuts-and-bolts historical drama set among financial criminals in 70s Montevideo, a kind of deadpan, low-rent South American cousin to The Wolf of Wall Street. Lives and dies by Daniel Hendler’s performance as the titular cambista, a man so cowardly and resigned to moral compromise he makes Jordan Belfort seem like a man of principle, as well as that of Dolores Fonzi, who plays his coldly practical wife. Some interesting historical commentary here, focusing on Uruguay’s position between Brazil and Argentina making it ideal as a shady dealing site, and the effects of seemingly mundane corruption among the financial class that spill out into the general population. Perhaps a bit too committed to its even, clinical tone, but a funny and enlightening film regardless.

Promare dir. Hiroyuki Imaishi

It took me a while to warm up to this one. Definitely feels like it’s taking too many pages out of other Imaishi/Nakashima creations (Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill are all over this), and I’m still not convinced the environmental and immigration undercurrents are actually executed effectively. However, it does showcase a lot of Imaishi’s usual strengths: extravagant, energetic action sequences, breathless pacing, great music choices, and vibrant character designs. In many ways it’s pure candy, and I guess that’s appropriate for Studio Trigger’s feature film debut. Unquestionably worth checking out for the Trigger faithful - and if you want some almost-there gay representation in your smash-bang mecha fare, maybe this will scratch that itch too?

Queen & Slim dir. Melina Matsoukas

As impressed as I am that anyone got a major studio to put out a film literally just about cop killers, I can’t help but think that this film should have been better, and could have been with just a few tweaks. On the plus side: one of the most gorgeous films of the year (Matsoukas puts her music video sensibilities to fine use on the big screen), great turns from Kaluuya, Turner-Smith, and Bokeem Woodbine, and one of the most impressively raunchy sex scenes in American multiplex fare in many years. The narrative it presents is still essentially worthwhile, and it brushes up against the radical more than accidentally, but it pulls itself down with clumsy Both Sides equivocating and allowing the title characters to slip too cleanly into martyrdom. Want to see what comes next.

Triple Frontier dir. J.C. Chandor

A thoroughly pulpy concept - a bunch of ex-special forces buddies get together to rob a drug lord - brought to life beyond expectations by a talented cast and crew. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, and Pedro Pascal are especially good here (especially Affleck, in his best showing in years), and Chandor and Mark Boal’s detail-oriented approach to the material pays off in a deliberately paced but always tense thriller. Surprisingly in-the-reeds procedural obstacles - how do we get to this house? how do we move this large pile of cash? - set up for the film’s best set pieces, and the ensemble has a great macho rapport that carries over even into the film’s bleaker second half. Perhaps benefiting from low expectations, but this is one of the key overlooked Netflix finds of the year.